Conferences

Iliad runs conferences and workshops that bring together researchers working on the mathematical foundations of AI alignment. Our flagship is the ILIAD conference series — the premier gathering for all things theory and alignment — alongside smaller, focused workshops that give researchers the time and space to work through a single hard problem together.

Topics across our events include Singular Learning Theory, Agent Foundations, Causal Incentives, Computational Mechanics, Safety-by-Debate, and Scalable Oversight.

ILIAD

ILIAD is a 200+ person conference about alignment with a mathematical focus. ILIAD runs in an unconference format — participants can propose and lead their own sessions. It is the premier gathering for all things theory and alignment.

ILIAD 2026 — August 3–7, 2026 · Lighthaven, Berkeley, California A 5-day, multi-track conference bringing together researchers in theoretical AI alignment. → Full details at iliadconference.com

Past conferences: ILIAD 2024 · ILIAD 2: ODYSSEY

More info

ILIAD 2026 Confirmed Attendees Included:

Erez Abrams
Alex Altair
Lucius Bushnaq
Abram Demski
James Fox
Adam Goldstein
Jacob Hilton
Jesse Hoogland
Geoffrey Irving
Ryan Kidd
Lionel Levine

Daniel Murfet
Richard Ngo
Jacob Pfau
Paul Riechers
Mikhail Samin
Adam Shai
Arul Shankar
Danica Sutherland
Jacob Tsimerman
John Wentworth
Bin Yu
Eliezer Yudkowsky

Abstractions Conferences

The Abstractions Workshop is a small, invite-only research workshop on the foundations of abstraction: what are abstractions that intelligent systems learn, and how can we characterize them formally? The workshop brings together roughly thirty researchers from AI alignment, information theory, reinforcement learning, and cognitive neuroscience for five days of focused collaboration at a castle outside Prague.

Topics include natural abstractions, bisimulation, emergence and coarse-graining, algorithmic information theory, and the question of what features are, mathematically.

Co-organized by Iliad and Fernando Rosas. Attendance is by invitation.

For more information, email conferences@iliad.ac.

Iliad Dormitory

The Iliad Dormitory is a month-long research residency at Lighthaven in Berkeley. Throughout August, Iliad fellows, instructors, and invited researchers live and work together on one campus — anchored by the ILIAD 2026 conference (August 3–7) and the August Iliad Intensive (August 10–28), with collaborative research and writing running alongside.

Participation is by invitation.

FAQ.

  • Iliad runs the annual ILIAD conference, which was first held in the summer of 2024. For more information, see iliadconference.com. We also organize the Agent Foundations at CMU conference series, and various other workshops and conferences.

  • The next conference will be announced when the planning is finalized.

  • Each event has a different admissions process and not all are open to the public. Please see the website of the event for more information.

Abstractions FAQ.

  • A 3-day residential research workshop on the mathematics of abstraction. Unlike the ILIAD conference, it is deliberately small: around thirty researchers, invited for close collaboration rather than talks to a large audience.

  • ILIAD is a 100+ person multi-track unconference covering the breadth of theoretical alignment. The Abstraction Workshop is a focused working meeting on one research theme, with a curated group and a residential format.

  • Attendance is by invitation only, and capacity is limited. If you believe your research is directly relevant, you can write to conferences@iliad.ac with a short note about your work — we can't promise an invitation, but we do read these.

  • Iliad covers venue and catering and travel support may be available.

  • Yes — attendees stay on site or at nearby accommodation arranged by Iliad. Room preferences are collected from confirmed attendees.

  • Requests are handled case by case — write to us and we'll see what's possible.